Salt Dough Santas and Snowflakes

Christmas is a great excuse to get creative and making Christmas decorations is fabulous fun for all the family; preschoolers, older kids and adults alike. There is also something very rewarding about seeing your tree dazzling in hand crafted decorations that you’ve made yourselves!

We’ve been very busy this year and apart from the obligatory fairy lights we’ve made all our own decorations. Over the next couple of posts I’ll share what we’ve done and how we’ve done it so if you fancy some festive fun you can give them a try too! First up is salt dough decorations…

Salt dough is a heavily salted flour dough that you can craft just like Playdough. Because of the large quantity of salt in the dough it bakes rock hard and is preserved indefinitely (just don’t get it soaking wet!). Once dry it can be painted and decorated. It’s a super fun, easy and safe activity for kids too. We’ve made ‘Salt Dough Santas’ and ‘Salt Dough Snowflakes’. Here’s how:

Mix salt and flour together in a bowl. Add the water a bit at a time and kneed into a Playdough like consistently. Add more water if required.

Lay a piece of cling film down on your work surface, place the dough ball down on it, then cover with another sheet of cling film (the cling film stops the dough sticking to your work surface and rolling pin).

Roll the dough with a rolling pin until it is about 7mm thick.

Cut out shapes using cookie cutters. We used a normal gingerbread cutter for the santas and a snowflake shaped cutter.

Place a sheet of greaseproof paper down on a baking tray and place your dough shapes onto the tray. Use a skewer to make a small hole in the shapes to thread a piece of hanging string through later.

Bake in the oven for 2.5 hours or until the dough shapes are hard on both sides and sound hollow when you tap them.

Decorating the santas

You will need:

Red and black acrylic paint

Sheet of red and white felt

PVA glue

White craft pom pom or cotton wool

Hanging string

Paint the body of the dough men red on both sides.

Paint the feet black on both sides.

Paint black eyes onto the face.

Cut a piece of string about 25cm in length, thread through the hole in the dough man’s head and knot to make a hanging loop.

Cut a pointy hat shape out of the red felt and glue to the head.

Cut a beard shape from the white felt and glue to the head.

Put a blob of glue on the top of the hat and stick on the pom pom.

Decorating the snowflakes

You will need:

Gold or silver acrylic paint or spray paint (we used spray paint).

Glitter of various colours

Sequins

PVA glue

Hanging string

Place a bin bag on the ground outside and arrange the dough snowflakes onto it.

Spray paint following the instructions on the can.

Immediately sprinkle glitter onto the snowflakes (you may want to bring them inside if it’s too windy for this bit!) so it sticks to the paint before it is dry.

Once the paint is dry, stick sequins all over with glue. You can also leave some with just glitter if you prefer.

Once the glue is dry cut a piece of string about 25cm in length, thread through the hole and knot to make a hanging loop.